It’s all about developers, developers, developers and developers. Steve Balmer put it better than anybody during his memorable performance where he was jumping around on stage or recently at MIX08.

What’s at stake?

Don’t get fooled by Steve Balmer, there is more to it than just a dance. Indeed any platform is only as good as the applications running on it. There is hardly anything new to this. You can build the most intuitive, powerful, robust and scalable platform in the world. It means nothing until you get applications that can take advantage of those capabilities and bring value to the end-users.

The demise of NeXT Computer

The best example is the raise and demise of NeXT Computer. When NeXT released its first computer in 1989, the operating system was second to none. It was crushing the competition and dwarfed Apple and Microsoft offerings. The OS was brilliant, robust and was swarming with innovations way ahead of his time. The hardware? Powerful, slick and stylish. In 3 words: a dream machine… As for marketing, the charismatic Steve Jobs was wowing crowds at conferences around the world. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, everybody was in awe but nobody would buy it. Granted the hardware was expensive at $6000 for a box but that should not stop people to pay if they see value in it. People pay for Mac even if they are twice more expensive than PCs because they judge it’s worth it. In fact the major issue for NeXT was really the lack of applications – NeXT never bothered to attract developers until it was already too late and some industry insiders even touted them as arrogant. They thought developers would come on their own, but they never did. As a result the public never bought the machines because it could not do anything useful for them and the company died from lack of applications.

Steve Jobs won’t get caught twice

Since then, Apple’s CEO has learned his lesson. The iPhone success can be attributed to its operating system, its well designed hardware, and the marketing genius of the Cupertino’s giant. However Steve Jobs, this time is well aware that Apple supremacy can be ephemeral and smart phones are an excellent base for distributing applications. To get more market shares and consolidate their position Apple needed to provide the most value-add above any other phones. Indeed in July 2008, Apple launched the App Store program to sell third-party applications for iPhone and iTouch. The store has been successful beyond expectations – they reached last winter their first Billion applications download in less than a year. Naturally, the competition has finally woken up and is trying to catch up. Nokia, Research in Motion, Palm, Google and Microsoft have all launched or announced their own version of the store.

The war is raging

If we look around us, the war for developers is raging and is all but limited to the mobile market – it’s all over the internet and has never been as intense. Companies small and big are exposing Open APIs, providing SDKs and creating developer communities. Indeed, the stakes are colossal for those who want to control the technologies of tomorrow:

Undeniably today more than ever, third-party developers have become strategic assets for companies. Thus, product managers should prioritize developer programs in their business strategy (when adequate for their product line). Yet, such requirements are too often discarded because not contributing directly to the bottom line – it’s well known that developers are cheap and don’t pay. In consequence companies are running the risk of missing incredible opportunities or to get caught unguarded as competition has already made its move.